New lineup for z100

[Joylovepulse967]

Maxwell & Crystal Rosas To Host Afternoons At Z100; Josh Martinez Joins For Nights - RadioInsight

iHeartMedia CHR “Z100” WHTZ Newark/New York has announced new afternoon and evening shows to debut on June 1. Current evening host Maxwell moves to afternoons from 2-6pm where he will be paired with current “Wild 94.9” KYLD San Francisco evening host Crystal Rosas for “The Maxwell and Crystal...

radioinsight.com

 

[erwin33]

Interesting. I'm curious if there will also be technical changes in the format. In recent years Z100 has changed every now and then, from less pop / rock/alternative to more urban mainstream pop with some EDM now and then. Wondering which direction it is going.

 

[dcowboy7]

To me they play hits from the billboard mainstream top 40 airplay chart.

 

[davideduardo]

To me they play hits from the billboard mainstream top 40 airplay chart.

You'd be surprised to know that many if not most radio stations don't even subscribe to Billboard; it is predominantly a music trade magazine. Some of us used to enjoy it when Claude Hall and Rollye James wrote VoxJox, but for the most part since the later 50's we've looked at radio "tip sheets" like those of Gavin, Bob Hamilton, FMQB, R&R and a number of others, some specific just to one radio format.

We learned in the later 50's and 60's that Billboard (along with Cash Box and Record World, were very subject to having their charts spiked by record company tactics such as shipping huge numbers of records to distributors to make it look like the music was "in the channels" but they allowed liberal return policies. The result was "a bullet" in the chart and, hopefully, increased airplay and sales. Radio figured that out and started looking elsewhere for song preference data.

Today, most of that is online and we generally also subscribe to MediaBase or BDS for airplay reporting.

Out of curiosity, I'd like to hear from people actually employed in radio as to whether their station gets Billboard.

 

[davideduardo]

Interesting. I'm curious if there will also be technical changes in the format. In recent years Z100 has changed every now and then, from less pop / rock/alternative to more urban mainstream pop with some EDM now and then. Wondering which direction it is going.

It will go in whatever direction their current music research tells them to go.

 

[TheBigA]

Out of curiosity, I'd like to hear from people actually employed in radio as to whether their station gets Billboard.

Since they put it behind a paywall: No. Same with Rolling Stone. I do subscribe to their free emails.

The fact that they offer a chart that combines streaming with airplay is interesting, and I look at it from time to time.

 

[b-turner]

A verification of what David said earlier: I was an assistant manager at a record store in the mid-late 1970s. One label had an artist that managed to sell enough to have 4 or 5 albums but was pretty much unknown. The record company rep told us our store would be getting 180 of his latest album (we normally ordered 1 just in case). We were told we have an automatic return for all 180 albums in 90 days. The push was nationwide. The hope was it would debut high on the chart and radio would give it a shot.

Radio knew better. I can't recall the artist. We played his albums when they came out to know what it sounded like. I recall thinking the artist 'didn't have it'. During that era we sold lots of Heart and Boston albums, as examples, months before anybody knew either band. We could tell those bands had everything needed to be big. In fact, when Heart finally broke, little Mushroom records had to contract with the big record companies to press records. For a few weeks you couldn't find a Heart album anywhere.

 

[TheBigA]

The push was nationwide. The hope was it would debut high on the chart and radio would give it a shot.

All that changed in 1991 with SoundScan. The biggest beneficiary was Garth Brooks. The sales were real. Radio could see the difference between turntable hits and real hits. Radio was forever changed. For some reason rock acts never achieved the status they once did before SoundScan.

 

[davideduardo]

All that changed in 1991 with SoundScan. The biggest beneficiary was Garth Brooks. The sales were real. Radio could see the difference between turntable hits and real hits. Radio was forever changed. For some reason rock acts never achieved the status they once did before SoundScan.

I'll agree that SoundScan introduced some element of credibility into the music industry, by then radio was not using sales data for much of anything.

Callout began sometime in the very mid 70's and AMTs were introduced somewhere around 1981 or 1982 by The Research Group, and stations were well into that kind of listener research by the 90's. In fact, we knew that sales and on-air preferences were very often quite different... proving finally one of Bill Drake's resources, the "turntable hit" which was a song nobody would buy but which was a strong on-air performer.

And we had a plethora of trades that showed what other stations were doing as a reference. We all had "favorites" that we knew had good skills in picking eventual hits and we watched them as they watched us.

In fact, my favorite ratings upset was in 1986 when I took on a #1 station that still did sales tabulations and countered with an amateur home-brew music test with a bunch of people either "arm up", "thumb up", "hand flat" or "thumb down" on each song. When the next book came out, there was an overwhelming new #1 based purely on listener input.

Oh, and the "research panel" was fueled with beer on ice and snacks.

 

[TheBigA]

I'll agree that SoundScan introduced some element of credibility into the music industry, by then radio was not using sales data for much of anything.

In a way, because sales data was proven to be incorrect. But also because monitored radio playlists began around the exact same time. It was a complete revolution of "We believe you" to "Trust but verify." It all happened in the early 90s.

 

[davideduardo]

In a way, because sales data was proven to be incorrect. But also because monitored radio playlists began around the exact same time. It was a complete revolution of "We believe you" to "Trust but verify." It all happened in the early 90s.

Most of us knew that the music industry had all kinds of tricks to affect sales reports; b-turner's post is very unfortunately typical of industry behavior.

In 1970 at one of the Mooney stations we got a confession from a retail store employee who told us of record promoters rewarding retailers for "enhanced" reports when stations called local music outlets. We also found that one retailer was being "rewarded" by our direct competitor, Mike Joseph's WKAQ, to report to us stiffs as big sellers.

At the same time, we realized that checking retail gave us data on lots of people who were not in our particular audience target. We ended up´working with just three retailers and would send an "intern" to them on payday and the following weekend to actually profile record buyers by age, gender, etc. to determine the songs our listeners or likely listeners bought.

 

[TheBigA]

We ended up´working with just three retailers and would send an "intern" to them on payday and the following weekend to actually profile record buyers by age, gender, etc. to determine the songs our listeners or likely listeners bought.

The point I reached in this process was a simple one: Why not ask our listeners? Eliminate the middleman. So we'd talk to the listeners, even in the 90s before we had social media. I found if you ask listeners a question, they'll give you an honest answer.

 

[davideduardo]

The point I reached in this process was a simple one: Why not ask our listeners? Eliminate the middleman. So we'd talk to the listeners, even in the 90s before we had social media. I found if you ask listeners a question, they'll give you an honest answer.

When I was with Metroplex at WHTT and WHYI in Miami in 1980, we already had callout. The system was manual, and each callout person was given a set of pages torn out of a phone book and told, "call every 7th number" or something similar. They'd play hooks from a cassette machine and the listener would score each tune. Someone would manually tabulate each day and each week, and the stations would adjust the playlists of currents accordingly.

In early 1981, Jon Coleman came in with a S-100 computer and a program to tabulate and do trending. We suddenly had computerized music research.

As I said, by around 1981 The Reseach Group was doing AMTs and many of us did some form of direct listener research very early on in the 80's. We have had callout (now done mostly online, of course) for about 45 years and AMTs for almost exactly 40 years, both of which are direct listener music research methods.

 

[dcowboy7]

The billboard hot 100 now blows.
Mariah carey goes #1 with a christmas song like 30 yrs later then off the chart the next wk.
Thats why the airplay chart is better - its more like the top 40 chart of old.

The mediabase chart & billboard are basically the same.
The top 10 of both of them this wk have the same 10 songs in pretty much the same order too.

 

[TheBigA]

The mediabase chart & billboard are basically the same.
The top 10 of both of them this wk have the same 10 songs in pretty much the same order too.

The Airplay charts are similar since they each monitor mostly the same stations, but have a few different metrics. Mediabase runs Saturday to Saturday, Billboard goes Sunday to Sunday, and that one day difference can occasionally lead to two different songs at #1. It's been that way since monitoring began in the 90s.

 

[Marcos_C]

The Airplay charts are similar since they each monitor mostly the same stations, but have a few different metrics. Mediabase runs Saturday to Saturday, Billboard goes Sunday to Sunday, and that one day difference can occasionally lead to two different songs at #1. It's been that way since monitoring began in the 90s.

So, that explains why Billboard publishes its Hot 100 chart online on Tuesday rather than on Friday, which is when the UK's Official Charts Company publishes its Top 40, first on the radio and then online. With the implementation of a 2015 international agreement under which the music industry releases all new albums and all new singles on Fridays, the Official Charts Company's monitoring week now runs from Friday to Thursday.